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Kip Ault

Teacher Education

Lewis and Clark College

Early retirement caught me by surprise–but gave me a chance to pick and choose projects and escape any more service on the Promotion and Tenure Committee. My work began in elementary school teaching–incuding the primary grades. Children's interest in learning science pushed me back to school in order to keep up with them, leading to Cornell and my dissertation, "Children's Concepts About Time No Barrier to Understanding the Geologic Past." I tended to gravitate towards paleontology. After teaching earth science at Truman State in Missouri, I joined the Sci. and Env. Ed group at Indiana University, then moved on to develop an MAT in science teaching at Lewis & Clark College. My research work utilized task-centered interview protocols as I probed children's conceptions of time, matter, and energy. Some attention to problem solving in geology lasted a short time, then from 1998 on I've been writing essays that draw upon the history and philosophy of science applied to teaching the earth sciences. My Lewis & Clark program featured summer field study in the geology of central Oregon (John Day fossil beds), a Lower Columbia River environmental history class anchored to the journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition, and an exchange program with the University of Costa Rica focused on learning natural history. I've always tried to make learning in science inviting, accessible, and useful to novices–while keeping it real.

Workshop Participant, Website Contributor

Website Content Contributions

My Geologic Address: Locating Oneself in Geologic Time and Processpart of Integrate:Workshops and Webinars:Teaching the Methods of Geoscience:Activities Students locate their homes on local, regional, and global scale geologic maps. They build up an "address" describing their location in geological terms based on the features of the maps, from local bedrock to regional and global tectonic features.

Oregon Field Geology SCI 675 (West) and 676 (East) and 575 (Central)part of Integrate:Workshops and Webinars:Teaching the Methods of Geoscience:Course "Oregon Field Geology" introduces field techniques at an novice level to both teachers and undergraduate Environmental Studies majors (the College has no geology department). Featured are travel through ...

The child as history: recapitulation goes to schoolpart of Integrate:Workshops and Webinars:Teaching the Methods of Geoscience:Essays The child as history: recapitulation goes to school Kip Ault, Teacher Education, Lewis and Clark College As an essay to share with the participants of the "Teaching the Methods of Geoscience" I have ...